Author Topic: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck  (Read 134867 times)

Offline john.k

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #300 on: December 08, 2018, 09:17:20 PM »
There is no way I would weld the flanges together...........I would just hammer the outer flange back to horizontal and leave it at that....A short in the indicators might be in the electrics under the steering wheel...........its not uncommon for the arms to come loose from the housing.........the original was mazak the replacements were plastic,and even worse ,if thats possible..........the who assy is the same as a 70 s Inter,conventional or acco..........the simple cure was to bypass the whole thing,but then it wont self cancel.....not a big deal....................a lot of generators wont run inverter welders.......in fact I found the inverter welders wont work in industrial sheds with very heavy current draw......something about phase shift ,the electrician at Tyco said.

Offline Ravvin

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #301 on: December 09, 2018, 02:42:53 PM »
The indicator issue and melted wiring is from the previous owner trying to wire LED tail lights and indicators up while not knowing what yellow wire did what. He eventually ran his own set of wires but had no electrical understanding as when I got it, if you tried turning the indicator either direction, the flasher unit was actually switching the positive directly to earth, which blew the fuse he put in, luckily.



This is a pic of all his wiring from under the dash that I ripped out. I fixed it all up, using the original yellow wires and the switch out of my other truck.
I now have working front indicators, headlights, park lights and side clearance lights. Later I will fit relays and the new H4 halogen headlight lenses and bulbs.

The welder has run off a standard 10 amp wall socket at work, in the past with no problems, but my house has ancient wiring. I replaced a fluoro light last week and found that the active and neutral were fabric wrapped rubber coated wires. The earth is actually bare twisted copper that runs all over the place up in the ceiling. The switches and power points are old bakelite ones that spark when switched on and off.
Most of the wiring around the house is in steel pipe, running across the ceiling and down to the power points and switches. Running a standard 5" grinder for 5 minutes heats the house wiring up to the point that I can easily feel it if I put my hand on it, so I don't think I'll rish a welder that is supposed to run off a 15 amp line.

Greg.

Offline john.k

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #302 on: December 10, 2018, 11:28:57 AM »
My house was the same.....fabric and rubber wires in steel conduit........ the  thing steel conduit has going for it is that rats cant chew the wires...which is a  big issue in Qld....I also have the old bakelite switches......and I keep rebuilding them ,as I think they are better than the white plastic stuff.....Good work on the truck rebuild.

Offline Acco 4x4

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #303 on: December 10, 2018, 09:16:54 PM »
Hi Greg, Good to see you are still at it! I have been eagerly awaiting the next updates..... With the AVR on the genset, have a look on ebay as they are basically all the same, different housing but otherwise the same. You should have one on your doorstep for under $50. If you have any dramas send me a message and I will see if I can help find you one at the right price. FYI sometimes depending on the type of generator, the exciter windings can loose their residual magnetism and wind produce enough current to excite the main field windings, they can be jump started with a 9 volt battery and they will be good as new again.... Keep up your good work!
Tim

Offline Acco 4x4

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #304 on: December 10, 2018, 09:20:02 PM »
Forgot to mention, I think you will find the tack welds will crack as the chassis flexes.

Offline Ravvin

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #305 on: December 11, 2018, 09:03:59 AM »
Thanks for that. The generator part of the genset is a Markon SCD21J.
The AVR module was an AVR MD1B. It's just hard to work out what the modern replacement is.
The company who sell the replacement are called Power Drive Systems and they are in Brendale, Qld.
The AVR MD1B was superseded by the AVR MD1C. If you could point me to someone selling these, it would be great.
I'm pretty sure the issue is with the AVR module, as the last time it was used, the person who borrowed it was running a huge light off it to do concreting at night. The generator was returned and went back into the shed, as it was mum's smaller backup generator. The same person later melted the socket on the new generator with the same light. It had a filed down 15 amp plug and he plugged it into the only 10 amp socket on the generator. The AVR board itself is pretty blackened all over. It hasn't been on fire, but it looks like it's been overheated. I'll try to get a pic when I get home today.

As for the chassis rails, by tacking, I mean to run a bead around an inch long, leave a gap, another inch of weld and repeat as needed.
Now that the rust flakes have pushed the steel apart, the steel lips won't stay together when squeezed closed.
The passenger side is perfect. I could maybe run a 5 cent piece along the gap the whole length of the double rails.
I just want the driver's side to stay closed enough to get through a mechanical inspection. I'm hoping if I weld them, by the time the welds crack, the metal might stay closed.
Once welded, I will grind the tacks back and paint the edge with the epoxy paint, which should protect it as well as disguise the welds.
After that I can have a go at wet blasting the insides of the rails before painting those, too.

Greg.

Edit..

Ok here's a pic of the AVR module.



Looks like a few cooked bits there. I thought it might just be dust or fine carbon deposits from the brushes or whatever, but it doesn't come off.
« Last Edit: December 11, 2018, 05:26:24 PM by Ravvin »

Offline Ravvin

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #306 on: January 09, 2019, 07:18:17 PM »
Hi all.
With a lot of assistance of Acco 4x4, I had a good play around with the generator over the break. It's all a bit weird. With the AVR connected, it is putting out about 90v. When I disconnect it, I an getting 250v, no load, or 240v with a load. The problem is the voltage isn't stable and is never the same twice when measured.
I have a different AVR on the way that I should be able to mount externally and I am hoping that sorts it out.

Other than that, I have been cleaning/sandblasting and repainting lots of stuff that has been getting put aside.



These are the before pics of the side rails and the end block of the winch assembly. The side rails are 1/2" thick steel angle iron and they bolt to and hold apart the end block and the main gearbox of the winch. The drum fits between them. They also bolt the whole unit to the chassis. As you can see, they were pretty rough.
These parts aren't really accessible once the tray is back on, so I wanted to do them right the first time. I cleaned the side rails back with the wire wheel on the angle grinder, then gave them a coat of rust converter, just to see where I had missed. Once all the rust was gone, I cleaned them all again and gave them a thick coat of the Surface Tolerant Epoxy. This time I had the white stuff, and it takes a bit to hide. I sanded it lightly, where I could, and gave it two coats of etch primer and then 2 coats of the Protec Olive Drab. Once dry, it has been sitting outside in the full sun to cure, as the Protec paint scratches very easily for a few days after it seems dry.
The end block is aluminium, so I wire wheeled the flat areas and then put it in the sandblasting box and got the rest. It also got the epoxy/etch primer/Protec paint coats. I have to put a new grease nipple in it and give the brass sleeve a bit of a hone, as it is a bit rough, but it should come up ok. You can't see it in this pic, but the over-run brake pad was stuck and I almost destroyed it, getting it out. There was no brake pad material left on it anyway. Luckily, the one off the other truck is in really good condition, so I will use it instead.



It looks pretty good. The thick epoxy and the sanding seems to fill a lot of the nicks, gouges and dents. I've been told by my coatings specialists that it's essential to sand the epoxy coating, as otherwise the primer and top coat won't stick. The extra sanding is going to be a bit of a pain, especially when I pain the insides of the chassis rails, but if I use the can of black instead of the white, if I miss anything and the top paint peels off, it should be less noticeable. Not that many people are ever likely to be under it to see. The best thing is that even if the top coat and primer peel off, the metal is still going to be protected with the epoxy. That stuff is amazing. I have a tiny speck on my glasses, and there's no way it is coming off.

The final step before I can put the winch back together and have it ready to refit, is to get a new pin for the main worm drive. The original was similar to the shear pin that was fitted to the MK3, without the groove machined into it to weaken it.



As you can see here, the original pin broke and the sprocket spun on the shaft, badly galling the inside of the sprocket and the outside of the shaft. Both have now been cleaned up and had the broken bolt removed, but I need to make a new one.
The original bolt was a bit weird. It was a 1/2" UNF thread through the sprocket and then a plain 3/8" shank through the worm drive shaft, but the bolt head was far smaller than a normal 1/2" bolt, as there is no room to get a socket on the regular sized head. My plan is the use the socket head bolt in the pic above, and turn the shank down to 3/8". I originally planned to use a longer bolt and run it right through and out the other side of the sprocket, but after the machinist who was helping me destroyed 4 different drill bits, one being a tungsten tipped one, he decided that the friction from spinning on the shaft had case hardened the inside of the sprocket. I remember it took ages to file the burrs out and his boring bar wouldn't mark it. Oh well, it was originally held with a single hole, so that's what I will go with.
The main issue now is that the guy with the lathe was a retired machinist, and his eyesight was going, so he gave all his gear to his son, who moved away.
I will check the big pedestal drill at work and see if the chuck will open enough to hold the head of this bolt. If it does, I'll spin it and try turning the lower section down with the angle grinder and a new grinding disk. Might work.
Anyway, I'll post up whatever I get into next.

Greg.
 

Offline john.k

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #307 on: January 10, 2019, 04:23:39 PM »
The original shear pins were pretty feeble...........I broke one,and went over to Oldings to get some spares.........the counter guy looked in the bin....none in stock.....said they sell dozens of them....anyway then we went into the workshop.....Oldings used to do all the Telecom trucks..........grabbed a couple of 1/2 unf bolts......took them to a linisher,linished the threads off the body,and handed then to me......he said if I wanted the lockwire hole,I could do it myself.

Offline Acco 4x4

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #308 on: January 15, 2019, 12:04:36 AM »
Happy New Year Mate! May your new year of truck restorations continue to come together with good luck,  success and you see it to the end! Always exciting to read another post from you and see your handy work come together. The sooner you get yours done the sooner I can drop mine off! ?? lol ;D
Keep up the good work!

Offline john.k

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #309 on: January 15, 2019, 05:34:31 PM »
And petrol is down to $1 a liter again......although its kinda hot here for driving petrol trucks.

Offline Ravvin

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #310 on: January 15, 2019, 06:44:44 PM »
Thanks all.
You're kidding about the petrol, right?
I filled up the work ute today and diesel was still 145.9 and regular unleaded was 135.9, which is down a few cents from the usual Christmas price hike.

The AVR module for the generator arrived yesterday and I bought a weatherproof box to mount it in, which I will attach to the frame somehow. There's no way the new AVR could be fitted internally, way too big.
I have the wire, connectors, spade clips and heatshrink, so hopefully I can get it sorted out this weekend. Supposed to be a few showers Friday, but fine over the weekend.

I've spent the day in stinking hot, humid, fly-filled weather, opening up a track that hasn't been maintained since the pine plantation was established.
Halfway through the job there was a dry electrical storm come through, which was really weird. Lots of rumbling and banging, but no breeze or moisture. Doesn't seem to have started any new fires, so that's a good thing.
All my contractors are doing their fire weather monitoring, and for once they aren't grumbling about it. Even they now realise how easy it is for a fire to start in the bush and how fast it could get out of control.

As for this pin for the winch, it's not actually a shear pin. The MK3 and 4 had a shear pin in the pinion and drive shaft that was designed to break and let the shaft spin freely if it was overloaded.
The F1, 2 & 5 had a different system. In order to fit the extra set of wheels under the back, they extended the chassis rails but they also moved the winch right up close to the back of the transfer case.
As it was so close, they couldn't use a driveshaft into the front like the MK3 & 4. What they did instead was to flip the worm shaft around, so the woodruff key and slot were at the front,
so they could put the brake unit on that end, then they mounted a drop-box on the back of the winch worm drive, where the over run brake used to go. This box has a sprocket that fits onto the worm shaft and it is held onto the shaft by the pin I need to make.
It has a smaller head than a regular bolt as there is no clearance to get a socket on it to do up or undo once the box is mounted. The sprocket has a 1/2" UNF thread in it and the shaft has the regular 3/8" hole.
The sprocket is driven by a chain to another sprocket in the box, that the new longer driveshaft attaches to. This second sprocket is an interesting design, as it is also the safety system. It consist of 2 plates, each with 3x 1" holes drilled through them.
In these holes are 3 large ball bearings, that transfer the rotational forces between the inner and outer plates. There are really heavy springs holding the plates together. The way it works is that when the load gets too high,
the plates roll up on the ball bearings, spreading the plates apart. The outer plate has a pin on the face that goes through a hole in the chain drop-box and presses a microswitch that cuts the ignition to the truck.
I checked the switch in mine and it works fine, but there is a break in the wire back to the cab somewhere, as when I manually short it out at the winch, it didn't cut the engine.
I'm betting that's the reason they were able to suck the winch rope in so far that it pulled the eyelet into the sheaves, spreading them, then causing the winch rope to cut down through the layers already on the drum, before exploding the bronze worm gear.
It probably didn't help that the winch rope was hooked around the end of the roller mounted to the underside of the tray, that is supposed to help lay the rope out evenly on the drum.
Somehow it was hooked on top of the grease nipple on the end and all piled up on one end of the drum before flopping over when the cable pulled tight, jamming it between the layers. That's going to be fun to get out.
I'll have to refit the eyelet to the end of the cable and use the section of old cable off the other truck to hook around a tree and take off across the paddock until I run out of rope and either pull the rope out, pull the tree over, or tear the winch out.
I might try it slowly at first, or maybe even back up to the tree and use the come-along to try to get it out. 

Greg.

Offline GGG

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #311 on: January 15, 2019, 07:10:09 PM »
I like that last idea. Could you set up a video camera beforehand? It may be entertaining:-)
Geoff O.

Offline Ravvin

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #312 on: January 15, 2019, 11:27:56 PM »
Yeah, I have a Go-Pro now, so I might make a few vids. Good way to learn about editing.

I'm quickly running out of trees along the back paddock fence. The previous neighbour was given these ones as seedlings, and planted them along his boundary. Unfortunately they were leftover plantation Eucalytus nitens, Shining Gum in SA, That Useless Pulp Crap down here.
They were bred specifically for a quick growth timber suitable for pulp production on a 12 to 15 year turn around. This means they prefer growing in clusters, which forces them to grow straight and fast. When planted out in a row like this, they go to spreading branches and low, stunted growth. These ones seem to have been constantly under attack from borers, with most branches riddled with so many holes that the bark eventually falls off and the branch dies.
Luckily for me, they are all on his side of the fence. Over Christmas, the new neighbour had a couple of interesting parties out in the paddock. One went for 2 days, shutting down at 2.30am and restarting with a BBQ lunch. There was much country and western music blared out at ridiculous volume, mixed with Johnny Cash and early Mylie Cyrus. On the second day they decided to have a burnout comp in their utes and hiluxes on the bit of bitumen road out the back. Halfway through I heard a loud bang and then a lovely metal grinding sound. Think they blew the diff in one of the hiluxes. They dragged it into the paddock and left it there.
Halfway between Christmas and New Year, we had really strong winds from the west. Luckily, this means the wind crossed my back paddock before hitting his trees. One of the bigger nitens split down the middle and landed right across the back of his parked hilux. A few days later, I came home from work and found he had cut the other half down. That was right on the fence next to the truck. There are a few others down the front, but we rarely get strong wind from the east, so I can safely park the work car there most nights. Anything from the north, east or south east, and I park out in the back paddock far away from all the dead trees.
I've been talking with one of the guys I share the building with at work. He used to be head of maintenance at the local weaving mill, until it was moved to Wangaratta, or Warnambool, some place starting with a W, and he is a trade qualified machinist, boilermaker and steam fitter, now working as a consultant to companies with metal/concrete surface protection issues. Things like bridges, hydro dams and generating stations. He lost access to lathes when the mill closed and might be interested in going halves with me in a decent lathe. We've been looking at some of the Hare & Forbes line, probably around $4-5k, and we plan on fitting the digital readout gear, similar to what was on the lathe I used to use. Our problem is convincing the guy he works for, who owns the shed we both work out of, to let us put it up on the mezzanine deck in the shed. It's unused space, and directly above the 15 amp plug as well as the 3 phase socket, if we went that way, although I prefer single phase as we can use it anywhere then.
Going to work on him this week. Point out all the useful things we could make for his damn Kombi. Not sure what they might be, but he probably won't think to ask. :)
Besides this pin I need to make, I have to replace all the rubber bushes and the metal cups that hold them, that support the transfer case. The cups look like the old head stem bearing cups on older pushbikes. The rubber bushing sits in it and the cup stops it being over tightened to the point it splits the rubber. The issue is mine are either rusted to the point of collapse, or really badly worn where the bolts were never tightened up and the slack let the transfer case assembly move around a lot. I need 15 of them. 12 for the top mounting plate, and another 3 for the round bracing rod that stops the box flexing backwards and forwards. The other issue is that the rubbers are not available. I checked the part numbers and also looked up the NSN and it seems the army had them made, or just never recorded who they got them from. I've used a few cross-reference charts and spoke to a few suppliers, but nobody has anything with similar measurements. My plan now is to get something similar in profile, with the correct size centre hole, and turn up new cups to suit.
The old rubbers looked like a disk cut out of an old thong, but thicker, with a smaller disk stuck on the bottom. They were around 1.5" across on the top with a 0.64" internal hole and the smaller bit on the bottom was 0.985" across. The whole thing was only 0.625" in overall height, but the edges were rounded to match the inside of the cup, which I suspect was just pressed tube. The more modern Nolothane ones are available with similar heights and internal diameters, but the edges are all right angles. I can easily turn up a set of new cups with the correct outer diameter where it fits into the transfer case mounting plate holes, and just machine out the inside to match the stepped Nolothane bushes.
I've been thinking about it a bit and I'm going to put the winch back in first, then the transfer case. The winch can drop in from the top easily enough, if I have someone helping to guide it as I lower it, but the bolts are a real pain to get at to tighten it up if the transfer case is already in. With the transfer case, I can slide it under the truck on the atv lift, then lift it with the crane until it is between the chassis rails. Then I can slide it forward, right up to the back of the gearbox while I fit the 2 mounting plates that attach to the chassis rails. Easy to get a socket on the heads with no transfer case in the way, and if I put them in before I lift the transfer case up, they get in the way, as the cross-member that is fixed to the top of the transfer case has to fit on top of the plates. With them bolted up, I slide the transfer case back, stick the Nolothane bushes and metal cups in place and lower it down and drop the bolts in. They are easy to get at from above and below, with the tray off.
That all sounds good, in theory. We'll just see what happens in the meantime that causes the whole procedure to change, like usual. :)

Greg.

Offline john.k

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #313 on: January 16, 2019, 02:39:52 PM »
i bought a drum of petrol for the mower,and it was 99.9......diesel is still 134 tho,been waiting for it to fall so I can fill the tractor...........The rubbers are Mackay Silentrubba s..............I think Mackay is gone,so poly u is probably the only option............its a lot harder than rubber ,and wouldnt need the tin cups.............Incidentally,the rear trackrod rubbers are a Rockwell part,but were $200 each in the 80s.............I had stacks of track rods for both ACCOs and Kaisers.......unfortunately the "army green" thieves stole all the smaller acco ones.......wasnt scrap thieves ,they left lots of other more suitable scrap...........yards dont like rubber in the steel.

Offline Acco 4x4

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Re: 180-971 F1 Crane Truck
« Reply #314 on: January 16, 2019, 09:52:25 PM »
Sounds like the karma bus swung past your pelican neighbours place.  :) You got to love it!